December 2006

On December 26 2006, an earthquake, a magnitude 7.1 according to the US Geological Survey, struck off Taiwan’s southern coast. It severely damaged the undersea cables in the region. As a result, Skype connectivity and call quality to and from the region is affected. You might not be able to connect to other Skype users at all, may see incorrect online status for yourself or other users, or call quality may be seriously degraded. The major affected regions are China and Hong Kong, followed by Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Singapore, Japan, India, and Taiwan itself.

We continue to monitor the situation.

Skype is to announce a new pricing structure for SkypeOut worldwide. Further details will be available from January 18th, 2007.

Skype’s new pricing structure includes a connection fee of 0 – 0.039 € per call (exclusive of VAT) effective from 13.00 CET, January 18th, 2007. The connection fee applies only to “pay-as-you-go” SkypeOut calling and does NOT apply to the North American Skype Unlimited calling plan.

Several SkypeIn calls are being transfered directly to Voicemail. This temporary problem should be fixed by December 19th 2006.

UPDATE Dec 19: fixed.

We are currently experiencing a technical error which causes problems if you make your first Skype purchase with credit card using the inline purchasing feature in Skype for Windows . If you haven’t purchased from Skype before, we suggest you to place the purchase on the web-based Your Account.

All the customers who have faced errors while placing your first purchase from Skype client with credit card, please be aware that we will solve the problem this Wednesday the latest. If you saw a payment charged to your card but no Skype Credit, we will automatically activate the credit for you.

UPDATE: this was resolved finally on 17th December. We confirm that all users, whose orders were cancelled during the time, can freely place their purchases now. All orders which were cancelled during the period, will have no charge made for the order. Unfortunately those orders, which you made successfully, but did not get credit in time, were forced to be refunded due to technical reasons. The money will appear back on your credit card in a few days.

New purchased or extended SkypeIn number are not assigned to users. When trying to call a new or extended SkypeIn number users get a standard message from their service provider “your call could not be connected, please try again later” or “this number has been disconnected” or busy signals.

Our teams are working hard to solve this issue. We apologise for the inconvenience

FIXED - 12/12/06

Your Account and payments section of skype.com is currently down or may be slow to respond. We’re working hard to resolve this.

UPDATE: fixed Tuesday night around 6 PM GMT.

Since 5 pm on Friday, UK SkypeIn is down. We’re working with our carrier provider to fix this.

UPDATE: fixed by 9pm.

UPDATE: nope, still more trouble kicked in late Friday.

UPDATE: fixed for good (fingers crossed) 1AM Saturday.